


I Dream, I Dream, I Dream

by acaelousqueadcentrum



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU, F/F, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 17:20:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4108857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaelousqueadcentrum/pseuds/acaelousqueadcentrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re lost when you come home.  Your mind is still over there, in the sand and the heat and the thick of the fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Dream, I Dream, I Dream

You’re lost when you come home.

Your mind is still over there, in the sand and the heat and the thick of the fight.

A car backfires in the alley …

A plastic bag flops and floats along the divide of the freeway …

A store is filled with too many people and too many sounds and too much information and everything comes to a grinding, painful, dark stop when someone’s child rams a cart into a display of soup, sending cans clattering to the floor …

You can’t breath. You can’t see. You can’t even move but you know you need to move. Find cover, identify the threat, eliminate it. Move on to the next.

Your mouth overflows with desert sand, the grit rough against your dry tongue, and your lungs struggle against the oily air, heavy with heat and gas and gunpowder.

Sweat rolls down your back, and your hands shake and clench around the gun that isn’t there–the gun that isn’t there–the gun that you slept with and rode with and prayed with for months isn’t there.

And that’s when you knows that you’re going to die.

Here.

Now.

Today.

In this grocery oasis in the middle of nowhere.

That’s when you know that you’re going to die, that no one will be coming to save you.

After all, there’s no one left.

You left them all back in the desert, memories and bones.

~

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” you hear, the soft voice cutting through the roar of desert wind, the harsh static sound of choppers in the distance.

“I’m going to help you up,” it–she–says, and then there’s a gentle hand on around your back and another on your arm and you’re moving again. Slow steps, like you’re just remembering how to walk on land again after years at sea.

“My name’s Clarke,” she tells you, her voice steady and soothing as she helps you to a chair someone must’ve brought out from some storeroom, “and you’re okay.”

With every word she speaks, you feel the tightness around your chest ease, the blood rushing back to your head, and it’s disorientating, dizzying, but better than before. When you look up, it’s into blue eyes that remind you of the clear, clear skies of Iraq. Not a skyscraper, a telephone wire, a power line in sight. Just the kind of endless blue that you could stare up at on lazy afternoons, and imagine that you were home again.

“Can you tell me your name,” Clarke asks, waving someone off. And you’re glad, because you don’t think you could focus on anything else right now.

Just her.

Just her voice and her eyes and the way you smell lilacs with every movement she makes.

“Alexandria,” you answer, “Holtz,” and are mildly pleased that the words don’t stick or stumble off your tongue.

“Hmmmm,” she says distractedly as she takes your pulse, “and how long since your deployment ended?”

Her eyes track yours, and you wonder what gave you away.

“It’s the way you hold yourself,” Clarke informs you before you can give in to the urge to ask, “the way you keep sweeping the area with your eyes.”

“And,” she continues, “this.” You feel her cool hands against your own. You hadn’t realized how you’d been holding them, as if your gun was there, as if you were ready to flip the safety and gently squeeze the trigger.

“First time out alone since you got back,” she asks as she rocks back and steadies herself with a hand on the floor.

You don’t say anything.

What is there to say?

You freaked out in a grocery store because some parent wasn’t watching their kid close enough.

“No,” Clarke says, and something about her voice pulls you back from the shame that began to settle in your bones, “don’t do that. It’s okay, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

She looks at you like she cares, like she knows, like this is all normal for her.

“I have friends who served,” she tells you, “a lot of them. This isn’t the first post-deployment panic attack I’ve seen.”

Crouching before you must be painful, because she winces and slowly moves to stand.

“You going to see someone about it,” she asks, and for a second you feel anger building inside of you. You almost welcome it. Anything to fill the empty ache.

But the way she looks at you, this Clarke, like she knows, like she cares, soothes over the spark, and you nod.

“Good,” she says, like you’ve agreed on something, sealed a deal or signed a contract, and reaches for your hand to pull you up.

You feel steadier now, calm. There’s a small crowd of people in the background, but still, all you can really see is the woman in front of you.

Slightly older, maybe. Eyes that are curious and patient, a cool blue that makes the desert seem so far away.

You reach for your cart, full of things you’ve forgotten the taste of after months at war, and if your hands still shake a bit, you grip the push-bar tighter to steady them. And as you turn, you want to say something. “Thanks,” maybe, or maybe something else, something that means more.

But you don’t. You can’t.

This is all you can manage right now.

Yourself.

“Hey,” you hear from behind you, and then she’s at your side again, fumbling through her bag for something.

“Here,” Clarke says as she hands you a small card, “if you want to talk or hang out or–just anything. Call me. Seriously, Alexandra.”

You smile; she looks almost embarrassed at herself and it’s beautiful. The first beautiful thing you’ve seen since you came back home.

“It’s Lex,” you tell her, and watch as she hurries back to her cart, her life.

The card in your hand is small and pale blue, and feel the thick, expensive paper against your callused fingertips as you read.

“Clarke A. Griffin, MD.”

You slip the card into your wallet, and your wallet back into your pocket.

You’re not going to call her.

You won’t.

You can’t.

But, still, it’ll be there.


End file.
